THORNTON, Colo. — Declining enrollment and a change in the state's funding formula are both on the list of reasons Adams 12 Five Star Schools is facing a $27.5 million budget cut.
"I have a son who's a freshman at Northglenn High School now, and he deserves every opportunity that my two daughters got. Not just him, but the other 34,000 students in this district. They deserve to have the best too," said Lori Goldstein, a former Adams 12 teacher and current school board president.
The cuts include 150 positions, which is a massive hit in the eyes of Goldstein.
"We really emphasize that our educators know our children by their name, strength and need. Because of these cuts and because of the number of students that they're going to have on top of what they already have, they won't be able to know their students by name, strength and need as much as they do now," she said.
This isn't the first time Chris Gdowski, the district superintendent, has had to deliver news like this.
"This time it’s even harder because we're not in a recession, we're not in a pandemic. It's not like the economy is shut down and so cutting $27 million now is brutal and painful," Gdowski said.
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Denver7 asked Gdowski if the district considered cutting administrator or board positions.
"I'll just start with: Board of Education members don't make any money in our district," he said. "On the administrator side, I'm not taking a pay increase next year, nor is my deputy superintendent."
Governor Jared Polis wants to fund schools based on their current enrollment instead of a rolling 4-year average.
The governor's office sent Denver7 the following statement Friday:
“Governor Polis appreciates the challenges Adams 12 faces, and understands the various factors that go into making hard budget decisions, as shown by the district’s budget. He appreciates how hard Superintendent Gdowski and the school board directors are fighting for the district and its students. Governor Polis has fought and continues to fight to increase education funding in a sustainable way, including by increasing total funding education by $138 million in his budget proposal and continuing to work with school districts to achieve an even greater total increase in education funding for next year. Governor Polis will not sign a budget that cuts school funding, and has proposed an increase of $388 in per student funding for next school year.”
In a letter to families and staff, Gdowki laid out where he feels those cuts will be felt the most, including teacher-librarian roles, gifted and talented advocates and academic interventionists.
Can't open the link? A copy of the letter can be found in the document below or by clicking here.
"We started working on this in January, as we started to see more and more indicators that the governor was proposing an averaging formula that was going to take more money away than what we'd expected from the agreement last spring," Gdowski said in a one-on-one interview with Denver7.
The budget reductions will be for the 2025-26 school year.
"I'll keep fighting to make sure that we fully fund adequately our public education, because public education is the cornerstone of our democracy, and we keep chipping away from it, and we can't keep doing that," Goldstein said.
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